Life's a juggle…

Pumpkin Pie Nice Cream Recipe

It’s Halloween next week, which seems to be coming a big and bigger deal in the UK. I actually quite like it, it takes the focus away from starting Christmas in September, and I’m all for celebrating festivals and marking the passing of the year.

In the UK, we do seem to be masters at celebrating festivals through the medium of food. In some ways, I guess this is part of our cultural heritage, in other ways it’s just a retail opportunity with the shops bulging with skull shaped chocolates and cupcakes decorated with cupcakes.

I think there needs to be a balance though, so I’ve made the most of seasonal squashes to make this pumpkin pie nice cream, which tastes delicious and is pretty good for you. Both pumpkin and bananas are a great source of potassium, whilst pumpkins contain high levels of both vitamin A and beta-carotene, both important for eye health.

Ingredients

3 bananas

About 200g pumpkin or squash, peeled, deseeded and cut into cubes

100ml almond milk

1 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice (see recipe below)

Chop the bananas into chunks and freeze until solid. Steam or boil the pumpkin until tender, then puree and leave to cool. Put the frozen bananas with all the other ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. This will give you quite a runny ice cream – 30 mins in the freezer will help it firm up. Once it’s frozen solid, you’ll need to take out of the freezer about 20 mins before eating to let it soften up

Pumpkin Pie Spice

I haven’t seen pumpkin pie spice as a stand-alone product in the UK, but there are plenty of recipes for it on US recipe sites. I’ve had a play around, and this is the combination I like – just mix the ingredients together and store in a small jar or tub.

3 tablespoons ground cinnamon

2 teaspoons ground ginger

2 teaspoons nutmeg

2 teaspoons ground cloves

1 ½ teaspoons ground allspiceVitamin A and beta-carotene, both important for eye health